Give Where You Live……………

that’s the theme of IBM’s Employee Charitable Campaign that kicks off this Wednesday.  IBM’s ECF campaign kicks off this Wednesday with an ECF breakfast and charity showcase at IBM Canada headquarters.   While this year IBM has chosen a theme of service for its Centennial, which is how I became involved in a Celebration of Service project, giving back to their communities through service and financial support has always been a priority for IBMers.  Through the ECF campaign employees can donate to any Canadian registered charity.  I have always participated in the campaign and appreciate being able to choose one or more charities to support each year through payroll deductions.  This year though I am honoured to be participate in the campaign in a way I didn’t expect (my year of expect the unexpected continues!).

After everything I’ve been involved in through Celebration of Service, I thought I was through for the year .  Imagine my surprise when I came back from vacation to a message asking me to participate in the ECF campaign as one of the ECF Heroes.  Each year IBM chooses several employees who give back to their communities to profile as part of the ECF campaign.  Each ECF hero has a poster that profiles their community work that is put up throughout IBM locations across Canada.   I was both surprised and thrilled to be asked.  One of the regrets I’ve had this year is that due to timing, I’ve only been able to tap into resources for Ostomy Toronto, yet I also volunteer with the United Ostomy Association of Canada.  While the poster is meant to highlight the work of the employee, everything I’ve done this year is about ostomy awareness to me.  I wanted to include both Ostomy Toronto and the UOAC in the poster, and when they asked me to write the first draft, I saw this as the perfect opportunity.   The poster turned out great, I’m not sure how well you’ll be able to see it, but here’s what it looks like:

ECF Hero Poster

The poster wasn’t everything though!  With this year’s focus on service, IBM Canada’s General Manager, Bruce Ross wanted to feature the ECF Heroes as part of the campaign kickoff video.  There are four of us from across Canada and we were each to be filmed talking about our volunteer work.  Two days before we were to shoot the video, they decided that myself and the other person who was local to Toronto, would appear in the video being ‘interviewed’ by Bruce.  We were told we’d get a script and would need to draft answers to the questions in it.  This made me very nervous and then we were given only a few hours to write our replies as they needed to be loaded into a teleprompter and translated into french for the subtitles.  I spent a lot of time memorizing what I wrote (I’ll never be an actor as it was only about 45 seconds ) as I wasn’t sure about this whole teleprompter thing.  I was very happy to hear my friend Dave would be there as that made me a lot less nervous.  I had a lot of fun filming it, though I’m told when they said I didn’t smile at all during my first time through except when I made a mistake, that they were being very kind.  Unfortunately I can’t show the video here, but I will say I didn’t cringe when I saw it, so I think that’s a good thing .

Much as I was thrilled to participate in the campaign, the most exciting opportunity for me was still to come!  The reason I have been quiet the month of September was because I was involved in helping out on a urgent issue at work and after working all day, I volunteered on this project evenings and weekends.  The first week, I worked til midnight on the Monday, a total of 16 hours, and I was exhausted, but just as I was about to log out, I got an email that had me bouncing up and down in my chair and shouting yes and then realizing it was too late to tell anyone about it LOL.  Ostomy Toronto was asked to display as part of the ECF charity showcase at the campaign kickoff breakfast at IBM Canada headquarters this Wednesday.  For me this is the most exciting opportunity as it’s another way to promote ostomy awareness PLUS this is the home office of myself and nearly all of the members of my Celebration of Service project and we get to take all the beautiful new materials they developed and show them off right in our office.  I think this is going to be a lot of fun, and I’ve encouraged all of them to come by if they are in the building that day.   I have something up my sleeve, if I have time to arrange it tomorrow .

So while I know I still owe at least one more post regarding my trip to Reno and the remainder of my vacation in August, I wanted to get this up before the ECF campaign started but I needed to wait until the campaign materials were out.  The posters are now up, my former second line manager saw me last Monday just after he put up all the ECF posters and yelled “there’s the superstar.” ROFL  The video is now up on the IBM intranet and a link to it was in the campaign kickoff email last week.

I’ve always enjoyed the ECF campaign activities and I’m so glad I’ve been able to participate this year.  I encourage everyone to “Give Where They Live!”  Just $1 a day can make a huge difference to an organization in your local community.

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